Gaster
by Fruitbird15
Summary: Alone and scattered across space and time, a lonely old man seeks to watch over all he has left. One shot.


It had burned.

He remembered so clearly.

He had screamed in his strange tongue as he'd tumbled into his experiment, pleading for help as his body had been ripped apart.

But no one came.

Gaster had felt himself spread out, pieces cracking and crumbling off him, fragments of bone whirling into space and time. His mind had flowed like the river, encompassing everything there was, seeing all, hearing all, being all.

It was terrifying. Every scrap of energy he could weakly pull together held on to what had once been his mind. It was so difficult, thoughts whirling away like scraps of paper under the universes glare.

He could manage hard, if he tried. He could look out over the underground, seeing all at once.

It hurt more then the fall had.

His sons didn't remember him.

He had watched as he fell as Sans had rushed to his fathers aid, lab coat flapping as he screamed in horror, before a flash of dark had knocked him back helplessly. And as Gasters mind had flailed in panic as he felt himself slipping for the first time, he had watched Sans rise shakily, clutching an eye socket as his face contorted in confusion. Before shrugging.

And walking away.

He'd been torn from the timeline so utterly, so completely, that not even images of him in photos remained.

At first he had tried to forget, allowing himself to spread thin, fading away among the timelines until only a thin thread of consciousness held him together.

Then the first reset happened.

It had ripped through his battered soul like knives and his mind had snapped together in shock, testing the ripples in the seam of things until he could pin point the location.

A flower.

A small, smiling flower.

With emptiness behind its eyes.

He had watched it toy with its playthings in sick horror. What was this creature? It was certainly no monster, he'd looked inside it for a soul...

And had teetered on the edge of a chasm.

Nothing.

He'd seen monsters with small, angry souls, and the bright, strong, glowing souls of humans that could yet crack and twist with anger. He'd even seen the wavering yet still perfectly formed souls of animals.

But he'd never seen nothing.

He withdrew from Flowey in fear. There was nothing he could do anyway.

Only watch.

A tiny bright point, as infinitesimal as a dust mote in a cathedral gave him some distraction.

His sons.

He followed them wherever they went, the power to see everything no longer a burden as he could watch Papyrus dodge spears with Undyne as Sans told jokes to a door in the woods.

He could see they had grown, and he was proud, even as Sans was content to waste time in his own way. Sans seemed calmer (be honest gaster, lazy), more thoughtful. And Papyrus was driven like nothing he'd ever seen, the thought of becoming a guard driving him on like a dynamo. It was enough to make him smile, tired and scared and lonely as he was.

With the benefit of hindsight, he realized he had never really been a good father. He'd been too distant, too busy in his work. Sans and him had been slightly closer, the shorter skeleton expressing an interest and aptitude for Gasters line of work.

But he'd greatly failed Papyrus. The wavering memories saddened him now, of brushing off excitable offers of snowball fights to edit blueprints, skipping bedtime stories to tinker in his lab. Him and Sans had things in common, but his younger sons boundless, childlike energy had simply confused him. He was a monster of science and logic, Papyrus had simply made no sense to him. And to his shame now, he'd dealt with it...by not dealing with it. By leaving Papyrus for his brother to care for, after his wife Fell Down.

He chuckled softly and the walls of time rippled.

His son had been a better father to Papyrus then he was.

It was remarkable how things change you, he mused. Only now that he was doomed to be forgotten, lost to time, did he see his youngest son for the marvel that he was. He was loud, and he was childish, and he was confusing, and he was _real._ Everything he did, he did with Determination.

And kindness.

He could see the core of darkness in San's heart, and sympathized greatly with the boy (not boy, man. He's grown so). But Papyrus...

There was only light.

It occurred to him for the first time, in his own way, Papyrus was very clever. He didn't understand science and had no love for machinery.

But he loved people.

He was loud and over-excited and didn't understand them sometimes, but his love shone through in his clumsy attempts. A Snowdin villager only had to frown slightly for them to be suddenly whisked off as they were loudly invited to enjoy homemade spaghetti or make puzzles. He tried. He wasn't the best, but he tried, and seeing some of the younger villagers snicker at him behind his back sent dark flames licking inside Gasters worn soul.

He took to sitting with him at night, pulling his mind together and striving to block out the input of the universe as he watched his youngest child sleep. Sometimes he would tell him a story, in the dark of the night, whispering words that the continuum's current whisked away before they could reach him, stories of snowball fights, baking days, and tales of his youth on the surface, before war had rolled over them like a tidal wave. Stories he should have told him before. All the things he'd lost the chance to enjoy, all the chances he'd wasted.

So many regrets.

And then the human came.

He'd seen them come and go and die before, and he'd stopped noticing. But when this one fell down into the ruins, the constant painful resets had suddenly stopped. He could see the path of time ahead of him, branching out so often it was hard to make out, and brought a larger scrap of consciousness into play to follow the child.

Not a bigger amount, at first. They were only young, what could they do? It was hard to read time when everything was so fluid and easy to change, the human would likely be of importance only when they were older. Or maybe it was because they were the last soul needed.

It was hard to tell (no he knew but he didn't want to think a child couldn't do that right? He was being paranoid, right?).

And then he'd seen the child lash out in fear on a snowy plain, seen Papyrus fall, crumbling into dust as the child stared at what they had done in horror, and his scream of loss had set space and time ringing with the sound of his grief.

The searing pain of a reset fell on him like balm.

Only for it to happen again.

And again.

And again.

His son dying, the king dying. Everyone falling to dust.

Through his pain he noticed the hunted look in Sans eye. He knew. He could sense it. A remnant of the accident, maybe? He pitied him.

The next reset, he had stuck to the child like glue, tracking it where ever it went as his heart clenched in loathing.

And the child surprised him.

For the first time in so, so long, he'd found himself laughing as Papyrus had bluffed his way through a "date". It had been awkward and determined and just so uniquely Papyrus. The child seemed to be trying. He held a close eye on the human, peering at them through a cosmic eye.

And saw light explode in the future, his sons free beneath a warm son.

He left the human be.

As Asriel had risen, pulled the souls inside him, he'd spread himself thin to hide between the cracks in time, weeping as he watched his children swallowed, becoming lost.

Being nothing.

Being saved.

He saw them happy, and his cracked face smiled as he saw them lying on the grass that first night, enraptured, as Frisk pointed out constellations.

He was happy for th

m

 _happy fo_

 _NO_

 _NO_

 _them th them_

 _happy_

 _PLEASE!_

 _ **Reset.**_

And this time the child emerged from the ruins, cloaked in dust.

The underground went silent.

Gasters heart couldn't break any further. There was no way the pieces of his heart could crack into smaller shards.

But his soul trembled in agony across the universes as he understood.

This was a cycle.

This would never end.

Worlds of joy and worlds of darkness and everything in between. Watching his sons free, and watching them die.

Over and over.

There was nothing he could do.

The joy of watching them grew hollow.

And then one night Sans rolled over in bed, sweating in his sleep in the grip of a nightmare.

And softly called out for his father, reaching in his sleep to the corner Gaster stood, unseen.

They still felt him.

Even if their heads forgot him, their hearts still sensed their fathers love and devotion, a feeling even the Core had never burned away.

He couldn't save them.

He couldn't stop them.

But he could stay with them, always.

And that was enough.


End file.
